JUDGMENT:

BHIMASANKARAM, J.:— One of the important questions to be decided in this appeal is whether the assent Ex. A-6 is a ‘lease’ falling within the ambit of Section 7(1)(d) and, fore, comes within the mischief of Section 49 of the Indian Registration. The Act defines a lease as including an agreement to lease.

2. The Privy Council decision in Hemanta Kumari Debi v. Midnapur Zamin Co.,1, dealt with the meaning of the phrase ‘agreement to lease’ and their hips made the following observations:

“…………, the Registration Act of 1908 provides that ‘lease’ includes an agreement to lease, and by Section 17 enacts that leases must be registered, and the penalty to non-registration being imposed by Section 49, which provides that if not registered to document shall affect immovable property which it comprises or be received as to evidence of any transaction affecting such property. It the document in question to be regarded as a lease within the meaning of this definition it could not be to in evidence. Their Lordships are of opinion that it cannot be so regarded. The ‘agreement for a lease’, which a lease is by the statute declared to include, much, their Lordships' opinion, be a document